Roll the Bones Information

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Short little info thread about Roll the Bones why it sucks and I hate it how to use it most effectively.

So Roll the Bones is an absolute pain in the ass, but has some very interesting gameplay associated with it which makes it sort of fun. Some of this might be review for some people, but I'm assuming that you're coming in here either a) very confused, or b) very new (and probably also confused), and aren't sure how it works at all

If RNG hates you like it does me, you can completely ignore this topic... It doesn't matter how many times you fish for 2 buffs, it won't happen (I'm only partially kidding).

Anyway, on to the matter at hand.

How does Roll the Bones work?

Roll the Bones (RtB) gives you between 1-6 buffs, chosen at random from the following list:

Shark Infested Waters (25% Crit)

Broadsides (double CPs)

Grand Melee (50% Attack speed and 25% Leech)

Jolly Roger (more SS procs)

Buried Treasure (Energy regen)

True Bearing (cd reduction on finishing moves)

When you cast RtB, the game first decides how many buffs you will get, then picks the buffs. You can either roll 1, 2, 3, or all 6 buffs. Getting more buffs is a distinctly lower chance than less; there is under a 2% chance to get all 6, and roughly a 35% chance to get 2.

Rerolling

Due to how random the buffs are, when to use which ones is sort of awkward and not very intuitive. Sometimes it is better to reroll your buffs and look for different ones, and sometimes it's okay to stick with what you've got.

As a general rule, you always want to reroll for 2 or more buffs. There are, obviously, exceptions to the rule:

If you roll SiW while you have cooldowns on, or they are going to come up in 15 seconds or less, do not reroll

If you roll TB at any point (assuming your cooldowns are on cooldown) do not reroll.

If you are in a situation where you don't really need to be doing much damage but there is a high damage phase coming up in the near future (think Feast on Gorefiend in HFC), you can try and fish for 3+ buffs or 2+ with SiW / TB being one of them. This will give you less damage in the meantime, but significantly higher burst during the high damage phase if you do manage to find a good roll.

Here's a Flowchart style image, courtesy of the guys at Ravenholdt:

There are also scenarios where you can reroll even if you do have 2 buffs. You don't HAVE to, but if you're feeling lucky you can give it a shot. If it pays off it will be great, but if not you're going to cripple yourself while you search for a better roll.

If you have Broadsides and Jolly Roger / Buried Treasure while both AR and CotDB are active, you can reroll

If you have Broadsides and Jolly Roger active during CotDB, you can can reroll